Pathology: Cells Prove to Have Strong Response To Their Physical Environment Biological Chemistry: The Ins and Outs of Making a Ribosome Education: Introducing the Class of 2003 Outreach: HMS and Boston Schools Join Forces Ambulatory Care: Understanding Cultural Differences Helps Doctors Give Better Care Agent May Be Effective Against Vascular Inflammation Studies Illuminate Heparin's Role in the Body Anticancer Gene May Work by Controlling Cell Death Social Interaction in Later Years May Delay Cognitive Decline Dyson Professorship Established Honors and Advances News Briefs In Memoriam: Chilton Crane Olive Gates Louis Diamond When East Meets West in Medicine Front Page

EDUCATION Introducing The Class Of 2003 The HMS admissions office had nearly 40 percent more applications to scrutinize in selecting the entering class for 1999 than for '98. It is the largest number—4,791—in at least 20 years. For all those who made the cut, welcome to the Quad. This sharp rise is the result of the School's decision to participate for the first time in the computerized, centralized application service coordinated by the Association of American Medical Colleges and now used by almost all U.S. medical schools, says Terri Orr, associate dean for admissions and student services, who works alongside the faculty associate dean for admissions, Jules Dienstag. The national pool of medical school applicants numbered 16,170 this year. At HMS, a total of 1,044 applicants were interviewed for 165 places in the class. Jules Dienstag Harvard's embrace of technology in the admissions process has not radically changed the class profile, Orr says. The entering class is similar in many respects to recent HMS classes, comprising 91 men and 74 women—a gender ratio nearly identical to the past two years' entering classes. (The classes entering in 1994 through 1996, by contrast, had more women than men.) The number of minority students entering also remains fairly steady. This year's class includes 49 Asians and Pacific Islanders, 20 African Americans, six Mexican Americans, two Puerto Ricans, and two Native Americans. The youngest entering medical student is 20 years old, the oldest is 34, and the median age is 23. Thirty-three U.S. states are represented in the class. As in most recent years, California leads with 40 students. Massachusetts is next with 21, followed by New York with 15, New Jersey (nine), and Maryland (seven). One student is from Puerto Rico, two from Canada, and one each from Nigeria, Tanzania, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. About 20 percent of the class (36 students) are making the short hop across the Charles River from Harvard College in Cambridge to HMS in Boston. The next highest numbers come from Stanford (13), Yale (10), Princeton (nine), and MIT (seven). Science majors make up 65 percent of the class, while 11 percent majored in humanities and 5 percent in social sciences. Fourteen percent graduated with double majors and 5 percent other majors. Terri Orr MD-PhD and Dental Students Among the 13 MD–PhD students entering this year are 5 women and 8 men, average age 23. Four are African Americans, including a pair of identical twins who graduated together from the University of Maryland in Baltimore. Other colleges represented in this group are Harvard, Dartmouth, MIT, Ohio State, Princeton, Stanford, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Swarthmore, the University of Washington, Wellesley, and Yale. At the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, the incoming class is made up of 16 women and 19 men. The new dental students include 16 Asians and three Hispanics. As with the Medical School class, the highest number (13) come from California, followed by Massachusetts (4). Ten countries outside the U.S. are also represented: Canada, Chile, Ecuador, India, Israel, Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, Ukraine, and the U.K. HSDM has students arriving from 25 colleges including Harvard, Cornell, Duke, MIT, Wellesley, Yale, the University of California at Berkeley, and UCLA. —Tom Reynolds